Typical watercraft may include a variety of seating arrangements of passengers in the watercraft. While many passengers may be seated throughout a watercraft, it is often difficult to seat a passenger such that the passenger is in a rear-facing position. For example, watercraft used for watersports such as wakeboarding and wake surfing include a bench-type seat along at least a passenger side of the watercraft. However, passengers seated along the bench surface may have difficulty in comfortably facing a rearward direction from the watercraft, such as to observe a person engaged in an activity behind the watercraft, and the bench is not typically convertible to support a user in a rear-facing position.
Attempts have been made to provide for convertible rear-facing seats within a watercraft. However, many rear-facing seating configurations reduce a number of seats available for passengers on the watercraft, and further reduce an amount of storage typically available under seats on the watercraft. Other attempts have required complicated mechanisms that require large amounts of space under the seat or are not sufficiently robust to withstand a weight of a user in combination with chop or other rough surface conditions encountered by the watercraft. Similar attempts are also cumbersome, and require movement of several cushion sections and other components to convert a bench-type seat to a support for a user in a rear-facing position.
What is needed, therefore, is a multi-linkage marine seat hinge for converting a cushion of a bench-type seat to a backrest for supporting a user in a rear-facing position on a watercraft.